I finished this book a few days before writing this post. Rather boring life-related issues prevented me from posting, but here are my thoughts.

The novel is told entirely in dialogue, between two men, one young, one old, and both, I suppose, missing something important from their lives. It’s easy to say companionship, but that’s not necessarily true. Rather, it is, I think, an individual who understands them, and by that I don’t mean that they share life experiences, but more that they are able to sympathise with and appreciate the decisions, both right and wrong, that the other has made.

It’s not as bitter a novel as I had expected – Puig had a bitter older phase, apparently – and while it isn’t life affirming or anything saccharine like that, it is an important examination of how two very different people can come to care for one another simply through hours and days and weeks and months of conversation.

The Books, Read page contains a list of all of the books I have read this year.